NYLON RIOTS, Caroline Mak and Kevin Chan’s first show with WOOLOO.ORG, is a multi-faceted, interactive exhibition requiring the participation of a global network of people, as well as the physical presence and labor of willing participants in the gallery. The artists have transformed WOOLOO’s NEW LIFE SHOP gallery into a space that simultaneously functions as a factory, boutique, and open marketplace.
Through an open call for submissions, visitors to the website WWW.NYLONRIOTS.COM become T-shirt designers, submitting designs that are posted and displayed in the exhibition.
Equally important is the participation of the visitors to the gallery. Visitors simultaneously play the role of laborer, consumer, and tourist. They are responsible for choosing a design, then manufacturing the T-shirt using the blank T-shirts and piles of various textiles and second-hand clothes that activate the gallery space. Workstations with basic tools will be set up for the visitors to complete their garments. After completion, visitors may then keep the T-shirt both as compensation and as a souvenir of their efforts in the gallery.
NYLON RIOTS explores the ecosystem of a brand in the contemporary garment industry. The concept is two fold. First, the artists have launched a new garment brand, preparing it with the necessary means to exist: a forum for design, a process and raw materials for production, and finally, a marketplace for consumption. With this infrastructure in place, the ecosystem must now be brought to life with the participation of the audience as designers, laborers, and consumers. Only then will the brand reveal its ultimate form and substance.
The very real risk of failure – especially as this project’s execution is dependent upon user participation and thus at the mercy of its participants – becomes a very apt side note to this tongue in cheek commentary on today’s consumer driven fashion market. Additionally, the separation of the remote design process from the labor and subsequent consumption in the gallery brings light to the often fragmented nature of garment production processes. Ultimately, this project weaves together all these themes, elements, and interactions to form a microcosm of the global garment industry.
This is Caroline Mak and Kevin Chan’s first collaborative project together. Mak, from Hong Kong, is an artist based in Brooklyn. She graduated with her Master’s in Fine Art from the University of Chicago in 2005, and has exhibited her site-specific installations in a number of exhibitions both in New York and across the United States. She is a recipient of an Emerging Artist Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park, NYC, where her sculptural installation is currently on view. Chan, from Vancouver, Canada, graduated with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Digital Media Design from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002. Since then, he has been working with new media in a number of artistic and commercial capacities, namely as an interactive designer at The Barbarian Group, an interactive marketing firm in New York City.
The exhibition will open Tuesday, November 27th and will continue through January, 2008.
To participate or for more information, please go to: www.nylonriots.com.
You can also email the artists at info@nylonriots.com
New Life Shop
Choriner Strasse 85
10119 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0) 306 676 3097
U-Bahn Rosenthaler Platz (U8)
Special thanks goes to Gregory Damiani for his technical support and help!
PROJECT CONTEXT
NYLON RIOTS can be seen as a brand created by the artists to investigate the system set up by the contemporary garment and fashion industry. By emphasizing the separation of the design process from the anonymous 'laborers' in the gallery, a microcosm of the global garment industry has been created for the exhibition.
By utilizing the internet as one of the primary means of communication – through posting 'Help Wanted' ad's on websites such as craigslist.org and myspace.com, and using the website www.nylonriots.com to act as a window to the gallery – a global exchange of ideas can be enacted and investigated. This is particularly relevant in an age where the movement of physical goods and people across borders are heavily regulated and controlled, while the exchange of ideas still remains more fluid.
The choice to focus on the T-shirt, an otherwise a simple item of clothing, is a reference to the ubiquitous cheap souvenir T-shirts consumed by tourists worldwide, as well as referring to the rise of the limited edition designer T-shirts that sell for a premium. By transforming the gallery into a multipurpose space that resembles several different economic and social spheres (a boutique store; a second hand market filled with cheap clothing; and a factory), the temporal and spatial movement that a garment undergoes is condensed into one singular event and location.
(The title "Nylon Riots" is referring to the fights amongst impatient queuing women when U.S. company Du Pont began to reissue nylon stockings after the end of World War II, and demand far outstripped supply.)
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NEW LIFE SHOP has been established by Wooloo Productions to represent, describe, and investigate contemporary Nomadism. The curatorial program is continuously negotiated with a range of guest curators and artists to create exhibitions that actively challenges the belief systems of the gallery space.
